My kids have an amazing ability to shred the knees of blue jeans beyond repair. I’ve saved a few old pairs of jeans with the intention of using them to make patches some day. HA.
Today I wanted the kids to make backpack charms using something we already had around the house and I stumbled on the old, trashed jeans in my laundry room. We proceeded to dismantle them with scissors and came up with lots of great ideas.
First, we made backpack charms by cutting out shapes from the denim. We mostly cut out circles and hearts. The kids decorated some of them with fabric markers. One pair of my daughter’s jeans had cute beading, which we cut around to make round charms. Then, we cut a little slit at the top of the charms with scissors and tied them with some ribbon to hang them from the backpacks. For my son’s charm, I used twine instead of ribbon. For my three-year old, I used a pipe cleaner, which she strung beads on above the charm.
Older kids could make little pillow charms by sewing two pieces of denim together and stuffing them. It would be cute to embroider them or put bright stitching on the edges.
We also made little pom pom charms by cutting long, narrow strips of denim, putting them together lengthwise and tying them with another strip of denim. I put the ribbon or twine under the denim strip I tied them with to make it easier to attach the tie. They’re cute. You can see one on the green backpack on the top of this post.
I cut the pockets out of the jeans and my daughter made a purse by cutting holes at the top and pulling a ribbon through. My son decorated his big pocket for his rock collection. He came up with the ingenious idea to cut out the tiny pocket on the front of the jeans to use as a “tooth fairy pocket” to put under his pillows instead of envelopes or plastic baggies.
Who knew ratty, old jeans could provide hours of entertainment?
Tags: backpack, blue jeans, charms, craft, denim, idea, kids, pockets, purse, tooth fairy
Creative Mama 
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